Presented at the 1999 APIII Conference Return to 1999 Abstract Index
PUSH-DELIVERY OF PATHOLOGY RESIDENT EDUCATION; ERADICATING THE EFFORT IN WEB-EDUCATION
Emory University
School of Medicine
Atlanta, Georgia
Hunter T. Hardy, MD
Pathology education via the Web?
Searching...searching...searching...occasionally finding.
The effort expended in actively locating any type of usable
Web-based information is considerable, even with today's
advanced search engines and catalogues. Add to this the
complexity of pathology information itself, and efficient,
effective educational experiences can become excruciatingly
frustrating. What if we used modern Web-enabled databases
to automatically deliver faculty-authored, customizable
information to pathology residents without their requesting
it? Liken it to receiving a newspaper reliably every morning,
on-time, with only the articles and information which were
useful and appropriate for one's level of training. There's
only one problem: Pathology faculty, in general, don't know
much about Web-authoring and delivery. Is there a way to
streamline the entire process?
Construction of an object-oriented relational database with automated web publishing capabilities is the key. Modern databases can provide reliable and secure data management and support potentially tens of thousands of users, with virtually no limits on the type or amount of data stored. A complimentary product, Oracle WebDB, is a browser-based, self-service content publishing and development solution that allows end users to build dynamic, data driven web sites entirely within a browser-based environment utilizing the data within the underlying object-oriented relational database. Since all the content is stored in the database, Oracle WebDB automatically leverages all the benefits of the database including reliability, accessibility, scalability and security.
This project aims to turn the tables on Web-based pathology resident education. Instead of residents searching for educational materials on the World Wide Web, the Oracle-based database will be constructed to extract and automatically push/deliver (via automated e-mailings) user-dependent, pathology-related educational materials to its subscribers. Initially, the educational materials will take the form of case studies with images and quiz-type forms, and weekly faculty-generated articles. This could eventually be expanded to include didactic lecture series. It is hoped that the combination of rigidly controlled, faculty-authored content and automated delivery will remove the burdens associated with actively seeking out and pulling pathology educational materials from the Web, resulting in an efficient and more temporally ergonomic, push process.
